Trafalgar (13 page)
“No, what I mean is, if they know the dictatorship of the Captains, which from what I see looks pretty bad, is going to come along some day, why don’t they do something to change things now so it doesn’t happen?”
“Can you stand another turn of the screw?”
“Well, yes, what do you expect me to do?”
“I told you to imagine time as an infinite and eternal bar of varying consistency, right?”
“Yes.”
“Well, it is possible that there are infinite eternal and infinite bars, et cetera.”
“Oh, no.”
“Think about the arborescent universes.”
I said nothing: I thought about the arborescent universes.
“What in reality coexists isn’t time, a time, but the infinite variants of time. That’s why the Neyiomdavianos of Uunu do nothing to modify the future, because there isn’t a future, there isn’t anything to modify. Because on one of those bars, those variants, those branches, the Captains don’t come to power. In another, the one who comes to power is ser Dividis. In another Welwyn doesn’t become New York. In another dra Iratoni doesn’t exist, in another he exists but he’s a bachelor schoolteacher, in another he exists and he is what he is and as he is but he doesn’t have a house stuck out into the woods and the lake that would make Frank Lloyd Wright kill himself from envy if he saw it, in another I never come to Uunu, in another Uunu is uninhabited, in another.”
“All right,” I said. “Enough.”
Marcos came to bring coffee and I asked him for a small one for myself.
“Seriously?” Marcos said. “You don’t want another orange juice? Or grapefruit juice?”
“No, seriously, a coffee. I need something stronger than juice.”
Marcos laughed and told me he was going to bring me a double whiskey and I said if he did, I would never set foot in the Burgundy again and he laughed a little more.
“Something’s missing,” I said to Trafalgar. “What happened with the wooden bowl?”
“I’m going to tell you. When dra Iratoni finished, I told him I was leaving that very day and he answered that it seemed the safest course. But he invited me to lunch at his home and I accepted. I had flowers sent to Madame Iratoni and I went and found the whole family and I again had a very good time and dessert was served in a crystal dish and not in wooden bowls. I went to the hotel, I paid, I took out my luggage and I went to the port and readied the clunker. My friend Iratoni came to say good-bye along with two of those business cronies he had introduced me to that morning, he gave me some bottles of wine from Uunu and I cast off. I sold the wood on Anidir XXII, where they bargain like Bedouins, but, as wood is a luxury item there—as it is going to be here before long—I made them take the bit and pay what I wanted and I left.”
“And the bowl?”
“Oh, the bowl. Look, I planned to travel again a week later. But three days after I arrived, I ran into Cirito and Fina at a concert and they invited me to dinner the next day. You know I prefer going to Cirito’s when Fina isn’t there, but they insisted and I had to say yes. I went, we ate in the garden because it was quite hot, almost like today. Cirito gave himself the treat of doing a barbeque and he served the meat on those boards that come with a channel on the side and rustic utensils. So as not to clash, there were raffia rounds for placemats, and dessert came in wooden bowls. It wasn’t loquats without seeds but chocolate cream with meringue on top. And when I scraped, with that rustic, wooden spoon, the bottom of the bowl.”
“I know.”
“You guessed it. Then, only then, did I understand what dra Iratoni had told me and I guessed much more. I think that not only do all of us, everywhere, have a syncretic awareness of time, but also that everywhere infinite variants of what has happened and what is going to happen and what is happening coexist, and maybe at some points and at some instants they cross and you think you remember something you have never experienced or that you could have experienced or that you could experience and will not experience, or as in my case with the bowl, that you come to experience if there is the almost impossible juncture, I don’t want to call it chance, of two crossings in which you are present. It is a memory, because in one or in some variants of time you experienced it or you will experience it, which is the same. And it is not a memory, because most likely in your line of variants it has not happened nor is it ever going to happen.”
“Let’s go,” I said. “Pay and let’s go, because I’ve had enough for today.”
And while Marcos went to get the change, Trafalgar put out the next to last cigarette, looked at the card on which he had drawn the grain of the bowl for me, put it back in his pocket and said, “Don’t forget that every day is the best day of the year. I don’t know who said that, but it’s true.”
“I can imagine where this advice is leading,” I answered.
Marcos brought a pile of bills on a little plate, he left it on the table, waved his hand, and went back behind the bar.
On the street, it was still very hot.
“I’ll walk you to the bus stop,” Trafalgar said.
[1]
In truth, this story belongs to my son Horacio. That I have written it is no more than chance and the reader will please overlook that detail.
Excess profits, that’s what I’d say. And in every sense of the word, because Edessbuss is an amiable world where everyone finds humor and an occasion for fun in everything. One almost—almost—starts to want to stay there to live, but if one maintains a bit of sense, not easy to do after a week of partying, one realizes that amusing oneself for two weeks or a year or three months is all very well, but to spend one’s whole life playing, for one who wasn’t born there, must be as boring as toiling thirty years as an office worker on Ortauconquist or on Earth. Yes, costumes, a shipment of costumes, masks, veils, confetti, streamers, and balloons, the works. I have bought and sold many crazy things in all these years, but until then I had never traveled with boxes of masks and perfume-sprayers. I already knew Edessbuss because I buy the clay from them that I sell on Dosirdoo IX where they make the finest porcelains, china, and ceramics in that whole sector, but I had never stayed more than a day or two, enough for the purchase and the loading. Really nice people, always good humored, easy to make friends with. I have a couple of excellent friends there, The Owner of the Cold Winds and The Toughest Tamer of the Pale, Pale Star. Not counting The Duchess of Bisque or The Splendorous Girl, who are two fantastic people. No, no, those are their names, they’re not titles or nicknames. At twelve years old, each one chooses their definitive name and as they have imagination and a sense of humor and everything is permitted, the results are terrific. And that’s not all. I met the Blue and Glaucous Giant, and Possessed by Women, The Angel Archangel Ultraangel, The Savage Captainess of the Storm Clouds, The Inventor of a New Color Every Day, The SuperFat Empress—anyway, you would not believe. Of course, what happened that time was there was a problem in Flight Control in the port and they asked me to suspend my departure, if I could, while they planned I don’t know what all arrivals, departures, and layovers. I stayed, of course. A week of partying, as I said. Then I learned things had not always been so easy. Edessbuss was an inhospitable world, almost dead. Seriously: it is the only one that revolves around Edess-Pálida, a killer star. It gives off so much energy, it burnt up plants, animals, rivers, and people. For generations and generations, hundreds, thousands of years, the Edessbussianos lived in semi-subterranean hovels, fighting against the heat, the droughts, the plagues, the floods, hunger, until finally, their brains racked to the maximum by so much misfortune, they invented the Roof. No, they call it the Roof but it’s a screen, an anti-energy cover that surrounds the whole world. What the theoretical principle is or how they placed it, that I don’t know. All of us who go to Edessbuss, and there are a lot of us, the majority to have a good time and a few like me to do business, cross it with no problems, we don’t even notice. The energy from Edess-Pálida doesn’t pass, or rather it passes up to a certain point: enough to turn Edessbuss into a garden full of lakes and flowers and birds. And then, and it could hardly be otherwise, for the last five hundred years the Edessbussianos have been getting even for everything that those who lived before the Roof had to go through. Everyone laughs, sings, dances, makes love, plays, makes up games and jokes. And I was the victim of one of those jokes. But I bear them no grudge. First because you can’t, they’re too nice. And two because the result was more than interesting. If I was a sentimental person, and I probably am, I would say it was touching. Yes, I’m getting to that. As I was saying, I stayed a week, in a hotel bungalow on the shores of Lucky Bounce Lake where one had to resign oneself to sleeping fitfully because there was a party every night. Of course, there’s no place on Edessbuss where they’re not having a party every night, so it didn’t matter where I stayed. And nevertheless, they know how to do business, believe me. Between laughter and exaggerations and jokes, but nothing escapes them, it’s a pleasure to see. No, I had already delivered the merchandise, the costumes and all that, and they had paid me and very well—hence my comment about excess profits. Of course they weren’t giving charity but sweetening me up for the next order and then we’d see, but as I knew it and they knew I knew it, we all took advantage without bitterness, they of the costumes and I of the cash, and devoted ourselves to having a good time. The true art of fun is learned on Edessbuss: no one rolls under the table drunk, no one vomits from eating too much, no one has a heart attack while trying to break records in bed. There aren’t fights, no one comes to blows with anyone over a woman because in the end they can have as many as they like. And as the women can have as many men as they like, they’re good-humored and they’re prettier all the time and a forty-year-old easily gets the better of a twenty-year-old and the seventy-year-olds stroll around with the airs of queens of the world and deign, when they’re in the mood, to teach subtleties to the eighteen-year-old guys. But yes, of course they work. And they study and they look through the microscope and they write novels and they pass laws. Like anywhere else. Only the spirit of the thing is different: for them, life is not a tragedy. It was a tragedy, before the Roof. Nor is it a farce; it’s a cheerful comedy that always ends well. A judge can let out a guffaw in the middle of a trial if the prosecutor says something funny, and an atomic physicist who is the dean of a college can meticulously prepare a monster joke for his students, and if the oldest kid took dad’s car out without permission, the old man falls over laughing and puts half a dozen toads in the boy’s bed and hides in the closet to see what happens. I assure you, it’s just a matter of getting used to it. The first day, one doesn’t know which way to turn. On the second, one starts to laugh. On the third, one imagines playing a joke, or invents one to tell, nothing original yet. And on the fourth, one’s a veteran. Go figure what I was after a week. But even so, they made me fall in their trap. That last night, to say good-bye, The Toughest Tamer of the Pale, Pale Star took me to a party at The SuperFat Empress’s place—she has a kind of Babylon with hanging gardens but smaller—and they made me fall like a fool. At midnight, I said I was going to bed, I had an early departure scheduled for the next day. No one tries to convince anyone of anything there and no one contradicts you: courtesy is something else. If one wants to leave, one leaves; if one wants to stay, one stays; and when the host decides the party is over, he says good-bye to everyone and everyone accepts it and no one thinks it’s wrong. I said I was leaving and they crowded around to wish me a good night. A really nice little guy, The Crazy Minstrel of the Still Waters, asked where I was headed and I said I was going home after stopping at Dosirdoo IX and Jolldana.
“Too bad,” he said, “because Gonzwaledworkamenjkaleidos is very close and it is a fabulous place for business.”
The others were in agreement—too much in agreement and too loudly, I thought later, when it was too late. But at that moment I didn’t notice, because the name had caught my attention.
“What?” I said. “What is it called?”
“Gonzwaledworkamenjkaleidos,” they repeated.
“You can sell anything there,” said The Savage Captainess of the Storm Clouds, “and the silver bells they make are the prettiest I’ve heard.”
Silver bells, of course, why not? But the thing tempted me. I asked where it was and the husband of The SuperFat Empress, whose name is Shield of Fire that Roars at Night, went to look for a route guide. They told me they would give me all the details at the port and they asked what I might be carrying to sell. I had the clay, of course, but that was for Dosirdoo IX, and I also had anilines, iron fittings, and plastic pipes. And medicines.
“That’s it,” yelled The Crazy Minstrel of the Still Waters. “They always need those! Medicines!”
“Vitamins,” someone said.
“Tonics!” The SuperFat Empress clapped her hands. “Tonics, tonics, tonics, tonics!”
“Cough syrup, anti-diarrheals, anorectics, neuroleptics, vasodilators, skin ointments, laxatives, antifungals.” They hollered out every kind of medication they could think of and they laughed, of course, how could they not laugh?
I managed to pull one of them, The Twelfth Knight of the Order of the Checked Doublet, into a corner and ask him what the probabilities were. He swore by his collection of bamboo cats that on Gonzwaledworkamenjkaleidos I could sell whatever I wanted and above all medicines because they went crazy about medicine and they didn’t haggle. All of which, I am sorry to say, was basically true, although in this case the nuances are important. So The Twelfth Knight of the Order of the Checked Doublet’s collection of bamboo cats must be sitting pretty in its display cabinet. Yes, the next day I went to that world. I slept well that night in spite of the music and the dancing at the hotel, I composed the route at the port, and I left. The Splendorous Girl came to see me off, in her chief nurse’s uniform, along with The SuperFat Empress before she went to the studio; The Toughest Tamer of the Pale, Pale Star, in a hurry because he had a meeting with the directors of the factory; The Crazy Minstrel of the Still Waters, very imposing as a Police corporal; and others that I don’t remember. The Twelfth Knight of the Order of the Checked Doublet sent a message because he was on call at the hospital. No, thank you, do serve yourself, I never take sugar. Of course it was close, I arrived almost immediately. It’s the fourth of a system of six, the only inhabited one, quite large, and it moves at a normal speed. I started to descend and to signal, looking for a port. No one answered me. And even that didn’t alarm me, see what an idiot? I flew low, still looking for a port, and nothing. It seemed strange, yes, but I didn’t get suspicious: I was still dazzled by the Edessbussianos’ enthusiasm. A little irritated by now, I chose a city, low, not very big but the largest one I found, and I landed in the countryside, as close as I could. When I was getting close to the ground, let’s say two hundred, two hundred fifty meters, what do I find? You will never believe it. An aerostat. A balloon, yes sir, it’s incredible. A balloon uglier than a fat chick
in a bikini, painted gray with darker stripes, as if camouflaged. Hey, these guys are at war, I thought, and I tried to remember if I was carrying coagulants, antibiotics, and disinfectants and if anything else might serve in case of trouble. I don’t sell arms, it’s the one place I don’t compromise. Everything else, from livestock on the hoof to diamonds from Quitiloe. Did you ever see a diamond from Quitiloe? My friend, you don’t know what you’re missing. The opposite of ours, the smaller they are, the more expensive. You understand why when they pass you one and you have it in your hand. The smallest one I ever saw measured two millimeters by two millimeters and weighed five and a half kilos. There are some that measure a meter in length and weigh hardly anything. If they’re longer than a meter they use them as mirrors but mounted on the wall because otherwise they float away. No, why would they be at war? I realized that before I descended and I stopped thinking about coagulants. I passed close to the balloon and I saw it had a wicker basket hanging below it and in the basket were three guys with frightened faces who watched and pointed at me. I waved my hand at them and gave them a big smile but they didn’t even answer. Yes, of course. You won’t have any more? Well, thank you. I landed in the middle of the countryside, very close to the city. I made fast in lift-off position, a precaution I always take when I arrive at a place for the first time. I packed a temporary bag, put in papers and documents because one never knows where they’re going to ask for them, I left the clunker, connected the alarms, and I stopped with my satchel in hand in the middle of a field. All of this took me a good while, but I had done things slowly on purpose to give the people of the city sufficient time to approach. Would you believe, no one appeared? I don’t trust that kind of thing. It has happened to me other times, believe me. On Eertament, on Laibonis VI, on Rodalinzes and, unless I’m very much mistaken, on a couple of other worlds as well. Of course, it might not be hostility or even indifference, but rather a norm of good manners, really rather strange for us. On Laibonis VI, for example, where they carefully avoided me for an entire day, it was, incredibly, an expression of interest, deference, and even respect. On the other hand, on Eertament things began that way and ended badly, very badly. So I took a few measures. I don’t use weapons: not only do I not sell them, I don’t use them. But I have a very useful little device that was given to me years ago on Aqüivanida, where there are more animals than people and some of them are dangerous but it is forbidden to kill them, which recharges on its own, adapts to any metabolism, and causes reversible, temporary devastation, long enough so one can get away. I went to get it, I hung it from my wrist, grabbed my satchel, and started to walk toward the city. Did you ever see
La Kermesse héroïque?
Great movie. I’ve already told the Cinema Club people that I’ll become a member if they promise to show it once a year. Do you remember the first scenes? That’s what the city was like. It’s called Gonzwaledworkamenjkaleidaaa. Seriously, it seems like one is never going to learn it, but that’s the least of it. The buildings were crude, stubby, old, ugly. The streets were not paved and there were little stone bridges to cross the irrigation ditches. The animals walked around loose. There was a plaza with a market, and people were dressed in the most outlandish fashion: some looked made to order for the heroic kermesse, others were like troglodytes with skins and everything, I saw two boys in jeans and T-shirts and there were others who looked like the baby brothers of Louis XV. I stopped a guy who had on a leather apron over his pants and an old-fashioned shirt and asked where there was a hotel. There were no hotels. We’ve started badly, I said. An inn? There were no inns. A hostel? There were no hostels. A monastery? Yes, you heard me right; trust me, if you ever go to a godforsaken place in which there are no hotels or boarding houses or anything, ask for the monastery. There were no monasteries.